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Preparing Keyboard for Paint

2020-12-06T21:02

I started preparing the keyboard for paint over the weekend.

I intend for it to have a glass-like surface, so it is important that the surface is flat and smooth to begin with. This process will be a bit of a long and slow and there won't be much to show.

The process is fairly easy, but has a lot of steps.

1. Fill any gaps. I used car body-filler to do that.

2. Put down a thick coat of filling primer to smooth out the wood grain.

3. Sand it flat, and keep laying down coats until its perfect.

4. Paint.

5. Sand off the orange peel and paint again.

6. Build up the coats until it's thick enough. I'm aiming for a fairly thin, yet solid coat.

7. I might put a clear over the top, but probably wont.

8. Sand it right back to 1200 or 2000 grit paper.

9. If I think it needs it, I might cut and polish the finish.

10. Polish.

Right now, I'm at around step 2.

Here are some photos.

There were a few hiccups along the way, but nothing major.

The first is that the matt black paint that I used on the backplate is incompatible with the paint I'm using for the wood. I'll need to sand the backplate and paint it again.

And the other hiccup is that the wood wasn't quite as smooth as it seemed. I originally primed it with just normal primer, but it was then obvious how much the wood grain still showed. I put another coat of filler primer to smooth that over. I may even need to lay down some body filler on the back, but that will become obvious when I see how well the filling primer worked.